


Tirrenu

by Petronia



Series: Hannibal stories [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dream Sex, Episode: s03e04 Aperitivo, Episode: s03e05 Contorno, Flash Fic, Kissing, M/M, Ocean, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Shiloh - Freeform, Will carries his house with him like a snail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-06 17:52:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4231215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/pseuds/Petronia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What will you do, now that it is yours?” Hannibal said. “Will you eat it?”</p><p>“That would doom me to stay.”</p><p>“Then stay,” Hannibal said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

For a long time, afterward, he could not find the river. He built himself a palace and wandered through rooms both remembered and imagined, where the murmur of past conversations eddied around him like sand in clear water: lies and intimacies and the mica gleam of oblique truth. Sometimes friends came to keep him company, but often he was alone.

Eventually, he built a motor, put it in a boat, and took it out to sea.

 

*

 

That night, as Will slept, the catacombs extended for miles upon miles in darkness, until the ground beneath his feet grew damp and the tunnel broadened, ceiling rising upward and away: a natural cavern opening onto Palermo's bay. The sound of surf reverberated as if within the shell of a conch. 

_I could have anchored here,_ he thought, then remembered that in the dream he had. He could see the guide lights of his boat, bobbing in the mid-distance, as the porch lamp of his house had used to appear to him; over the fields and through the fog. His feet were bare, and he waded into the water, letting the waves tug at his ankles and then his knees. It was warm enough to swim, still, despite the lateness of the season.

"Beneath the Tyrrhenian Sea," said Hannibal, "the tectonic plates of Europe and Africa meet, and over eons they birthed islands: Stromboli, Vulcano… the land on which we stand today."

He sounded very close; Will did not look. "That was a long time ago.”

"I have seen it, elsewhere in the Mediterranean. It's a protracted labour. The sea turns warm close to the vent, and fills with iron. It smells like rust."

"Like blood," Will said. Warm and rust and salt.

"Blood is inevitable," Hannibal said. "It's a prerequisite for any form of existence. That is God's design."

Will turned. Hannibal did not appear as the stained apparition of Will's most recent memory, but clean and neatly clad: all in black from head to toe, an indefinite form apt to dissolve into the shadows that comprised night air and sea. Will had never seen him wear black in life. He reached out, it being safe to do so in this place, and placed his hand on Hannibal’s chest, palm flat over the hollow where a heart might reside. Nothing beat there, but Hannibal was solid and warm nonetheless.

“What will you do, now that it is yours?” Hannibal said. “Will you eat it?”

“That would doom me to stay.”

“Then stay,” Hannibal said. He placed his own hand over Will’s, and the other on the side of Will’s waist, and drew him in. He brushed his lips over Will’s temple, the curve of his ear, his throat. The touches felt familiar, only half-constructed. Will closed his eyes and leant his head against Hannibal’s shoulder.

“Did you do this?” he murmured. “When you thought I wouldn’t remember?” Hannibal’s fingers slid into his hair, cradling his nape, and that was memory too: distilled and bleached, treacherously, of the accompanying pain.

“You remember everything,” Hannibal said. “Is this what you want?”

“It would have been easier,” Will said, “that’s all.” Hannibal bent his head and pressed their mouths together, wet and hot and shockingly real, and the dark water rose and swallowed them both.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

“There are means of influence other than violence,” Chiyoh said, but she was already dead; or perhaps Will was. Antlers grew in silence, a vast, shadowy grove, and pierced her through. The train passed under them as it might submerge between the eaves of a dark forest.

Will fell, deeper.

“You should have appealed to my better nature,” Hannibal said. He was close, a long expanse of warmth at Will’s side, though they did not touch. The sleeper car rocked like the berth of a boat at sea.

“I wasn’t aware you had one,” Will said.

“We all have potential,” said Hannibal, “though we may not recognize it. Or wish to acknowledge it. Doesn’t it make you curious?”

His voice was low and tender; it reverberated through Will and made him ache. He wanted to close his eyes, but that would only take him further down, where thought was lost and other, more diffuse terrors lurked. His mind floated, a leaf circling in a calm eddy.

“I didn’t mean to change you,” he said.

“You did. Just as I meant to change you.”

“I didn’t consent to be changed.”

“Does a caterpillar consent to the chrysalis?” Hannibal said. “The chrysalis to the moth?”

“Which of those are you?” said Will.

Hannibal shifted, breathed out on a sigh. He lifted himself onto his elbows, suddenly corporeal within the cramped space of the berth. Will turned into him unthinkingly; he remembered the strength in Hannibal’s arms, the way they had enclosed Will and supported his weight and then let him fall. Their legs tangled together. Will reached out and touched sleeping clothes, something soft and fine-grained like silk.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” he murmured. He could hardly see at all: there had been night lights in the sleeper car, but they were gone. Hannibal was only haptic presence, a more perfect darkness.

“Your mind has enough to work from.”

“I don’t want it to.” He wanted it very much. “It’s absurd.” 

“We are not who we are during the day. There are no barriers within your mind, but desire is constrained by channels we barely recognize.”

Will’s fingers quested for folds in the clothing and found skin, warm and human. “I thought of… you and Alana. Sometimes.”

“We thought of you as well.” Hannibal touched him too, then: his hand cupping the base of Will’s skull, fingers sliding through his hair. Down to clasp his throat, pressing a little — not enough to cause discomfort: only to indicate presence and possession. Will’s breath left him, quietly and all at once. “Would you have come to our bed, Will? Would you have come to me?”

Dream-lust had no centre; it permeated like air or sound. “It would have been unfair,” Will said, and felt more than saw Hannibal smile.

“That’s an admission, Will,” he said. He moved suddenly, rolling Will supine. He took hold of Will’s sleep pants by the waistband and skimmed them down, until they were tangled around Will’s knees. Then he pressed closer. Will made a pleading noise and rocked up against him.

“I miss you,” he said. The words burned his throat.

“I know.”

“You left me.” 

“You’ll find me again,” Hannibal said. “You have already.” Will wound his arms around Hannibal’s neck and buried his face against Hannibal’s collarbone.

“I have to kill you,” he said. “I have to—” Hannibal bore down against him, weight and sweet, relentless friction, and Will lost the sentence, lost everything. He dug his nails into the muscles of Hannibal’s shoulders, until he thought he would draw blood even through the silk.

“Please,” he said.

“When you thought of me,” Hannibal said, “did you imagine I was gentle?”

_I did,_ Will couldn’t say, and the dream-truth was so unbearable that when the pleasure came it was indistinguishable from pain. He shook, and Hannibal held him through it, held him close.

“Then I’ll be gentle,” he said. “I’ll do it very gently next time, my love.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

“Sleep,” Hannibal said, when the bright light and the pain became too much. “Sleep,” and Will felt the pinprick in the crook of his arm. He tried to protest, suddenly afraid — it had begun the same way three years ago — but physical relief rolled over him, dragging him under just as the waves had.

Forgetfulness followed.

 

*

 

He dreamed, a long memory-dream — it began with Molly, though she was not what he remembered of it afterward. Early in their marriage they had made a road trip south with Walter, and had visited Shiloh. It was in the spring, and everything was green and lush and cool; the ground was soaked through and gave way under one’s step, like a sponge.

After a while Will left Molly and Walter at the picnic grounds and walked by himself, into the green. He could hear their laughter, receding behind him, and then he was alone.

The Bloody Pond was a sort of hollow, a round dip in which rain habitually collected. The new grass grew thick and waving to its edge without transition. The water was the colour of transparent brown glass.

Will approached until he was standing in the shallows, and looked. Francis Dolarhyde lay under the surface, a still effigy, his hands crossed over his chest. He was pale, the ragged wound in his throat long since washed clean. Refracted light played over his closed eyes and mouth like smoke. The great, leathery wings extended to either side of him, until the curves of bone broke the surface like black, wet claws; at first glance they looked like driftwood.

“Is this what you would do with him,” asked Hannibal, “if you could?”

He looked as he had, in the house on the cliff, when all the barriers between them were gone. Will wanted to touch him. He turned his face away. 

“How’s your American history?” he said.

“I know what happened here.”

“He was a soldier too,” Will said. “He fought a war his entire life.”

“So he did,” said Hannibal. “Would you honour him? Raise a monument to his cause?”

“The cause was lost,” said Will.

Hannibal fell silent. Will strained his ears, but it was quiet: he could no longer hear Molly or Walter. No susurration in the trees, no birdsong. Shiloh was at peace, in its vast indifference to murder and mercy alike.

He had thought it haunted, he remembered. But even then he’d known the ghosts were his.

Words came to him, a fragment of lyric:

_When they poured across the border,_   
_I was cautioned to surrender,_   
_This I could not do;_   
_I took my gun and vanished…_

“Whence the partisan,” Hannibal said, “when he finds the war has ended and he is free?”

“Freedom isn’t the right word for what we deserve,” said Will.

Hannibal did not answer, but Will felt the weight of his gaze. He lifted his eyes to meet Hannibal’s and found them suspiciously bright. 

He had had the same look at their last supper, when he had asked Will to come away with him; it was only later that Will had understood.

“Hannibal,” he said, suddenly aware that he no longer dreamt: that in this place or some other Hannibal was by his side. That they were alive. He reached out, and Shiloh dissolved around him like fog.

He lay in the dark, in an unfamiliar, enclosed space, all bearings lost. Pain was remote, like phosphene flares in the distance. Will’s heart lurched in his chest — then Hannibal’s hand grasped his, a warm and solid shock. Their fingers tangled together.

“Will,” Hannibal said, “Will…” 

His voice was hoarse, as if he’d shouted until his throat was raw. Will could not remember it happening. He closed his eyes. 

“I’m here,” he said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics are from Leonard Cohen's "The Partisan."
> 
> I don't know if some people might consider this more disrespectful than where other bodies have ended up on this show -- apologies if so -- in any case it's a symbolic Shiloh of Will's memory palace, rather than a literal representation of the place.


	4. Epilogue

Hannibal slept, barely – an infant’s doze skimming the surface of unconsciousness – and woke to sensation before thought. Sticky sheets, body-warm weight at the small of his back, an unaccustomed ache in his thighs. The sting of broken, swollen skin at the base of his throat where it met his shoulder, and between—

The dissociated memory of Will's voice broke the surface: _a fighting pattern as much as sexual._

Will.

Hannibal opened his eyes. He could not see, but Will was very near, in the darkness. He shifted the arm that had been slung over Hannibal, and ran his hand down Hannibal's spine, over the curve of his buttocks: a possessive, gentling gesture, as if Hannibal were one of his restive animals.

The below-deck cabin smelled entirely of the two of them, mingled: the heavy closeness of skin and sweat and semen. Like the den of a singular beast.

Hannibal made himself relax, knowing his stillness had been mistaken for something other than what it was.

"The Quechua of Peru and Bolivia," he said, "speak of the past as what lies before us, and the future, which we cannot see, as what lies behind. So we gaze forward into the past as we walk, backward and blind."

“Are you blind?” Will asked. “In this moment?” His hand began to move again, slipping lower, and Hannibal closed his eyes and turned his face into the pillow, so as to better be grounded by his touch. It undid something in him that he hadn’t known was there; even a day, an hour ago, he would not have said the knot existed.

Will had touched him so rarely. Each time, now, was the first.

"In this moment… I can’t apprehend you," he said, lips moving against cotton. “Nor myself, when I am with you.”

_All, all undone, slipping into the current..._

“Uncharted waters,” Will murmured. “Is it so very different?”

“You know it is,” Hannibal said. “The way you — you’re — do that again,” and heard Will’s indrawn breath.

“It’ll take a while,” he said.

“You have time,” Hannibal said, “tonight, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. You can keep me here, and be as selfish as you like. Don’t you want that?”

“This isn’t...” Will said, his voice rough. “It’s not a cage, Hannibal.” But he was pressing close, fingers against Hannibal’s jaw to pull him into a kiss. His breath came hot against Hannibal’s lips, as if it were his own.

“I dreamt of you,” he said.

“Just now?”

“Yes.”

The thought filled Hannibal with a warm, secret pleasure, like wine brimming in a cup. “Tell me,” he said.

Will shifted his weight, and he allowed himself to be rolled supine and under. Will guided his knees up and apart and settled between them, close enough that there hardly seemed to be intervening air. He pressed another kiss against the inside of Hannibal’s thigh.

“It was Palermo,” he said, “a memory of the sea there, at night. I’d anchored in the bay and slipped over the side, so I could swim. It was dark, but the water felt strange: it was warm and smelled like iron. Iron and salt. And I thought…”

His fingers pressed inside Hannibal, firm and insistent.

“...‘Someone’s bleeding.’”

Hannibal bit his lip. He was sore, but not seriously so: enough to heighten sensation. He could feel the slickness remaining from their previous game, the lack of resistance his body offered, as though in the sightless confines of this space it existed only for Will’s use.

The thought should have carried an edge of humiliation, but did not.

“Once I reached the shallows,” Will said, “I saw that it was you. Floating in the waves, awake, as if you’d allowed yourself to be cast ashore. You’d been cut open — here. Through the sternum… the rib cage...”

Over the heart.

“The sea didn’t wash the blood away,” Hannibal said, letting the vision fade in with Will’s words; his touch. _Cut open._

“No. There was too much of it.”

“How did you feel?”

“Calm.” Will leant forward, and with the leverage of his weight thrust deeper: the pressure achingly sweet. “How do _you_ feel?”

Hannibal shook his head. Strange, to be the one handled and dissected and exposed, but fitting, too. Will was with him. He slid an arm around Will’s shoulders and drew him closer, tangled his grip in the sweat-damp hair curling over Will’s nape. Will added another finger to the stretch, and Hannibal’s spine curved reflexively inward. Their mouths met, hot and questing.

“I want you,” he said against Will’s lips. “I want…” He wasn’t hard yet, perhaps wouldn’t be, but it wasn’t necessary. Will shifted again - a sudden sensation of emptiness - then he was sliding into Hannibal, gripping his hips for leverage, deep, so deep, slick and burning like a blade but there was only pleasure. The last boundaries gone. And Will made a lovely, breathy, half-voiced noise, muffled against the curve of Hannibal’s throat; it almost sounded as if he were in pain.

“You looked at me,” he whispered. “You saw me, and you said…”

“There you are,” said Hannibal. “I’ve been waiting.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tirrenu by Petronia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9568730) by [Killde_Achilles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killde_Achilles/pseuds/Killde_Achilles)




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